


The Right Waves Gather

by tucuxi



Series: Hawaii Five-O Steph Series [1]
Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, F/M, Families of Choice, Gender Roles, Gender or Sex Swap, Genderswap, Internalized Misogyny, cis-swap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 18:36:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14142078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tucuxi/pseuds/tucuxi
Summary: Steph has always been too much: too tall, too strong, too stubborn for her own good.Meeting Danny Williams changes her life in more ways than just forming Five-O, in no small part because of his daughter, Grace.





	The Right Waves Gather

**Author's Note:**

  * For [evanelric](https://archiveofourown.org/users/evanelric/gifts), [Himawari ヒマワリ (dlemur)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dlemur/gifts).



Steph has always been too much: too tall, too strong, too stubborn for her own good.

She was the head cheerleader in her sophomore year of high school and the star sprinter and long-distance runner for their track team. She was a straight-A student. She had a curfew and a list of expectations and responsibilities long enough to drive her few friends insane. She was no fun, all work and no play, all pressure and no release valve.

She got a lot of insults going into high school. There were the sneers from the boys she'd known too long to be attracted to, and the taunts from the ones who were scared of her and the looks and wandering hands from the ones who wanted nothing more than the prestige of banging the head cheerleader.

Steph ignores it. After she's sixteen, she has a family to keep together, a father who works too hard, and a brother who gets into too much trouble, and the memory of her mother bringing them all together over the kitchen table at dinner every night. Steph is a terrible cook: they eat a lot of pineapple pizza with hastily-constructed salads, and their father doesn't always make it home. Then something changes and John sends Steph and Mark to live on the mainland with her aunts and uncles, separated not just from home and from their father but from each other.

Steph arrives in eastern Washington state in January. She's a tan six-foot-two in the middle of a state full of people who think she's crazy for wearing sweaters indoors when the heat is clanking away. She discovers that there's no place for her on the cheerleading squad until next fall's tryouts, and then learns that the Newport track team makes you choose between marathons and sprinting.

She chooses marathons, runs across the state border into Idaho and back home; she keeps her grades up, and her head down, and talks to her brother on the phone once a week and her father less often than that. She tells herself she doesn't miss Hawaii, doesn't miss the sun, or the surf, or the fresh pineapple. She doesn't think about her parents' house on the sand, or the way her mother used to braid her hair. She keeps her head down and her grades up and follows the rules both written and unwritten, and does her best to get out of town.

Steph is accepted to Annapolis and moves across the country without a second glance. Her classmates are boys who look her up and down, peg her as a dyke, and either give her grief or give her space. She one-ups the former when she has to, and talks to the latter. Her female classmates are few and far between, and mostly want the desk jobs.

Steph wants to go into combat. She's strong, she's fast, she's tough, and she's determined as fuck. She excels at strategy and intelligence testing, takes the optional science classes, and jogs extra laps to keep up her endurance while her classmates are out drinking and picking up women or getting picked up. She has a goal.

Steph graduates with flying colors and gets placed in Naval Intelligence, shore-side, base-centered and land-locked in the Navy. She breaks codes and hacks against the black hats and puts herself through the same rigorous physical paces.  
When she finally can, Steph announces her intention to test to become a SEAL. Her classmates laugh: women aren't strong enough, aren't tough enough, aren't good enough.

Steph's test results leave them all in the dust.

She goes around the world this time, instead of sitting at a desk. She gets on her first carrier ship just after passing her Qualification program. She shaves her head the first time she crosses the equator and sacrifices her hair to Neptune along with the other baby squids, because it's what you do, and she's not bucking tradition just because her hair was nearly to her waist and braiding it reminds her of her mother.

Her shipmates grow their hair back out to varying lengths: Steph leaves hers in a short buzz cut. One of the other women on board, Cath, makes fun of her for it, but Cath isn't a SEAL, Cath isn't six-two, Cath gets to work in Naval Intelligence from shipboard and send other people in to do the wetwork. Cath gets to have long hair and uniform-standard lip gloss. Steph doesn't.

What Steph gets to have is hair so short that no one can grab it in a fight. What Steph gets is cool tech and new guns and language training in more languages than were on offer in Newport, or even in Hawaii. What Steph learns means she's assigned to a unit in sub-Saharan Africa in which she usually passes for a man unless they need an in with the local matrons.

Steph dresses in local gear in one town, her head wrapped to conceal her short hair, and talks to girls who have been married since they were pre-pubescent, whose genitalia were cut with glass knives and stitched together with gut twine. One of their friends died from the surgery, because the doctor ran out of antiseptic and the headman wouldn't let him stop. Her parents would have disowned her for refusing the surgery, in any case. One of the girls, heavily pregnant and holding two children, for all that she's not yet eighteen, says she sometimes wishes that she had been the one to die. Steph holds hands and listens and gathers enough intel from the edges of what the girls say to know that the militants don't have their claws deep into this town – not yet.

A few days later, and dozens of miles away, Steph dresses as a mercenary, short hair on display and body-armor and arm tattoos doing the work of hiding her sex. She talks to militant lackeys who joke about what will happen later, once the order is given to kidnap those same girls. Steph forces herself to laugh and joke about the prospect of war brides, willing or no. She gets into the leader's tent, garrotes him from behind, and is out with his cell phones, laptop, and bank account information before his blood is cold. The cell folds a week later under the weight of his sins and Steph's intel. Her team is commended for its good work.

Steph does her job. She is assigned the Hesse brothers as a challenge, long before they know how deep the Hesse's tendrils go, how firmly rooted they are in the online Silk Road and the world's physical black markets, the fishing and sex slave trades and the former Soviet oligarchies. They deal in desire, with no regard to morality, and a lot of people want power, and even more want guns.

So Steph talks to women who have been bought and sold by the Hesse brothers; she tracks arms dealers through jungles and deserts and mountain ranges on foot. She learns more about custom-injected shoe soles than she ever expected to know. She and her team are persistent and dogged and stubborn, and her team captures Anton Hesse in Korea.

And then Victor Hesse kills her father. A single gunshot echoes over tinny phone speakers, and the world shatters.

Steph runs back to Hawaii on autopilot, pulling back up all the close-mouthed show-no-emotion skills she learned when she first moved to the mainland. She is recruited for a bullshit political op by a woman who doesn't have half Steph's trust, and sees that the crowd at her father's funeral is missing the only face she was hoping to see there. Mark didn't come.

Then, at the house of all places, everything changes. Steph runs into a loudmouth cop from Jersey who won't take no for an answer, takes the governor up on her offer just to piss him off, and finds herself benched from the SEALS, now the leader of a task force with immunity, means, and the ability to get back at the man who killed her father in cold blood.

* * *

Steph's new team is a trial. Steph's team is a godsend. Steph's team drive her crazy and keep her sane.

Danny, however, is a whole other kettle of fish. Steph meets him, eyes him up and down with a gun pointed right at her, and immediately pegs him for a macho mainland haole who will never fit in. She catalogs him as a dude who pumps iron to make up for his height, someone who will push and push and never be satisfied because she's taller and stronger than him and won't offer to suck his dick.

And she's wrong. Or, well, she's partly wrong. Because Danny also has a daughter for whom he moved to this so-called pineapple-infested hell-hole and whom he loves more than anything in the world. He's a Jersey boy with floppy blond hair who curses a blue streak and won't give up on anything once he's got his teeth in it. He's a ball of incandescent rage when he talks to his ex-wife's lawyer, of bitterness with his ex-wife. But his eyes go soft and his voice almost crooning when he talks to Grace on the phone.

Steph has never been much good with kids: she babysat in Newport, but only for the hellish kids, the ones everyone else her age knew better than to take on, the ones who climbed onto the roof and dropped pets down the chimney, or needed to be physically sat on before they stopped hitting each other. Steph learned how to be a drill-sergeant when she was seventeen and babysitting the Nelson triplets and their two older brothers, solo, because her friend Amy bailed on her at the last minute to go make out with her boyfriend. While Steph was removing a triplet from the (empty) fireplace flue and convincing the eldest brother to get down from the roof right now, young man, before I call the cops don't test me, Amy was losing her virginity in the back seat of a car. Given that Steph got out of it with the whole twenty dollars an hour she was supposed to split, and Amy got knocked up, she's always figured she got the better deal. But it does mean she defaults to bossing them around, not actually communicating.

Danny, of course, is great with kids, effortless and charming in a way Steph never sees him turn on with adults. It's a puzzle, and one Steph is determined to solve. And after meeting her at the football game, seeing how well Grace takes the shooting and the ensuing chaos, Steph knows that Danny's little girl has to be part of it.

She's curious. And Steph has never known when to leave well enough alone, when to stop, call it a day, leave people their boundaries, their secrets, their peace. She's never really had to before.

It's easy enough to invite the whole team over on a weekend between cases. The surf isn't high enough for Kono to be out at the Pipe, and Chin outright told her he had no plans. Getting Danny to bring Grace really just involved a judicious application of the phrases "private beach" and "no teenage boys."

Grace is a spitfire, but she's surprisingly vulnerable at the oddest moments, watching Kono wistfully when she paddles out to the tiny cove waves, looking sidelong at Danny when he looks relaxed and happy.

Steph takes to inviting her and Danny over every weekend Danny has her, because Grace seems to like it, and it saves hearing about public beaches and boys from Danny all week long. If it's also because Danny-and-Grace are good company, well, Steph is good at keeping secrets.

"Steph?" Grace asks one evening. Danny is out getting groceries, insisting that he's going to cook real food, none of this pizza nonsense, real pasta bolognese like his Ma made.

"Yeah?" Steph asks, tipping her head back from the hammock she's sprawled in with the remains of a beer. "What's up, Grace-Face?"

Grace frowns, and then tugs at the hammock.

"Mom wants me to go to an all-girls school," Grace admits. "Danno doesn't want to talk about it, but I think he agrees, even if step-Stan has to pay for it."

She's surprisingly perceptive for her age, but the money isn't what she's worried about. Steph pats the hammock next to her with her free hand, and Grace clambers on in.

"What do you think?" Steph asks, just to get Grace to keep talking.

"I –" Grace frowns. "Mom wants me to learn etiquette and how to be a proper lady, so grandma isn't embarrassed when she visits again."

Grace looks stubborn and fragile at the same time. Steph wonders what her grandmother said to make her react this way.

"Okay," Steph says, because that didn't answer the question. She tries a different angle. "You know you don't have to go to a girl's school to learn etiquette," she points out.

Grace looks at her.

"I learned royal European etiquette at Annapolis," Steph says, and Grace giggles.

"You didn't," she says. "You're a bull in a china shop, Steph."

Steph spares a moment to wonder what on earth Danny ever saw in Rachel, who is exactly the kind of status-obsessed mean girl Steph could never stand, and from whom Grace has to have heard that particular saying.

"I don't have to use it all the time," Steph says. "But how about this. You think about it, and then next time you see me, you ask me some questions, and I'll tell you the right answers, and then you check with your mom."

Grace makes a considering face.

"You can go to whatever school your parents say is okay," Steph says. "But you don't have to go to an all-girls school to learn those kind of things, you know?"

Grace nods, and then she curls up against Steph, all long lanky limbs and awkward coltish motion until she's cuddled up into the curve of Steph's arm.

"Thanks, Steph," Grace says. "Tell Danno not to wake me up until dinner's ready, ok?"

Steph maybe shouldn't feel so comfortable with several stone of pre-teen girl draped all over her, but she just wraps an arm around Grace's waist and finishes her beer while she watches the sunset.

Danny gets back a little later, and Steph holds her empty beer bottle up in a simultaneous shushing-and-get-me-a-beer gesture that, thankfully, Danny seems to understand.

Grace doesn't bring it up over dinner, but she does seem quieter than usual for the rest of the weekend.

* * *

If Steph pulls out some of her old textbooks before the next time she sees Grace, well, she knows a plea when she hears one.

From what she's seen, Rachel is teaching Grace how to be posh and wealthy, how to project just enough perfectly groomed arrogance to protect a fragile interior. Steph doesn't have a lot of experience with this kind of thing, but she's still in mandated therapy. She's steered away from talking about gender norms when it was for her own sake: what she does keeps her going just fine. But for Grace, well, it turns out Steph's willing to go out on a limb.

"Okay," Steph says to Dr. Kalama. "You keep asking me about my relationship with gender norms. Let's go there."

Dr. Kalama blinks, obviously shocked.

"Of course," she says. "May I ask what caused this change of heart?"

Steph shrugs.

"Grace," she says. Dr. Kalama knows more about Grace than anyone not on Steph's team, more than anyone but Danny.

"Well, then," Dr. Kalama says. "Where did you want to start?"

Steph has an answer prepared for that one: she has a list of possible questions, a plan of attack that's probably excessive, but allowed her to sleep last week when she was planning this session in advance.

"Etiquette," she says. "No, wait, it makes sense."

She explains Rachel's insistence on an all-female school, how delicate and posh she seems to want Grace to grow up to be.

It's exactly the kind of girl Steph has never had time for, never been able to imagine herself being.

"I –" Steph pauses, because the words aren't there yet, aren't lining up. "She's more than that, I guess. She's not just some posh half-British housewife."

Dr. Kalama frowns.

"If she wants that, fine," Steph adds, though she personally can't see why anyone does, or would, or should. But it's not polite to admit that, and besides, Dr. Kalama will have a field day with repressed, internalized misogyny if Steph says that.

"Thing is, Grace doesn't want that. She wants to surf and play softball, not have teaparties with crumpets and pinafores. Or both. But definitely not just the frilly dresses." Steph pauses. "Danny doesn't get why it's a big deal, and Rachel doesn't care what Grace wants. But she deserves to get to make the choice," Steph says.

She shrugs, because this is where Dr. Kalama needs to talk, so Steph can figure out which path they're going down.

"Like you didn't?" Dr. Kalama asks, and Steph resists the urge to recoil, because she hadn't really expected this one. But anything that causes that strong a reaction has to hurt, somewhere. Steph sits with it for a moment.

"Yeah," she says, finally. Dr. Kalama looks surprised that Steph is still talking, and that makes the stubborn part of her buck up, and buckle down.

"Probably," Steph agrees. "I mean, I'm not going to introduce her to Toast, or tell her to drop out of school, but –" Steph cannot imagine a world in which she isn't the tough one, the badass bitch you don't fuck with. It's kept her safe, kept her protected, kept her from having to deal with some of the shit people throw at other women. It's also kept her pretty well alone, because most men don't like their dates to be former SEALs with badly-repressed PTSD and a better bench-press weight than half the Navy.

"I want it to be her choice, I guess," Steph says. "So –" she pauses, because this is going to be a delicate operation. "So I need to know what to do."

She's not one of Grace's parents, and she knows Danny is touchy about Step-Stan moving into Grace's life. Rachel has been frosty polite every time she's met Steph, which is probably more to do with Steph being herself than with teaching Grace to paddle on a surfboard that was still on the sand at the time.

"It sounds like you're already doing it, frankly," Dr. Kalama says. "Just by modeling behavior the way you do, you're showing her that options exist. Maybe bring Cath with you the next time she has shore leave, let Grace meet her, too."

"So she can see you can be in the Navy and still be a real girl?" Steph hears herself say.

Dr. Kalama frowns, and Steph finds all at once that she is completely unwilling to deal with this shit right now, not with that expression, not now. She has the answer she needed: they can shelve the rest for later.

"Would you look at that," she says. "Time's up. See you next month."

Dr. Kalama frowns, but lets Steph leave.

It's a definite step up from the time Steph got Five-O to fake an emergency to get her out of talking about her mom, so maybe that's progress, or something.

* * *

"You're good with her," Danny says one evening a few weeks later. He and Steph are on the lanai, Grace asleep in Steph's old room. "It's completely baffling, mind you, because you're an utter Neanderthal with other children. The only possible explanation is that my daughter is magic."

Steph takes a sip of her beer.

"She makes it easy," she says. "Plus, I'm not that bad with kids."

Danny laughs, and tips back his bottle of beer. Steph resolutely does not watch the bared column of his throat. There are things she can have, and things she can't have, and wanting doesn't change which one is which.

"You," Danny says, "are a disaster with children. Absolute disaster. That poor kid in the hotel elevator," he says, as if he doesn't bring that kid up every time anyone so much as mentions Steph and children. "Scared out of his mind, and you pull out a gun? No," Danny says and he's clearly winding up for a rant. "You lost the kid-gene somewhere along the way. Maybe they train it out of SEALs, you know, like, here's your badass quotient, what're you going to sacrifice to fit it all in? And you, because you're – you, I don't even know what you were thinking, Steph, I never know what you're thinking, babe – you were like, look, I don't need to talk to kids, fuck that shit."

Steph usually lets this kind of thing roll off her. She knows better than to fight back, than to argue: it just proves the point. She's difficult. She's a bitch. She's all sharp corners and hard edges, nothing maternal or child-friendly in her at all. She's a SEAL, she's not a real girl. It's nothing she hasn't head before, it's not new.

It doesn't usually come from Danny, though, is the thing.

Danny takes a breath, and Steph cuts him off.

"That's enough," she says. She gets up abruptly, turns it into a movement toward the house to get another beer. Her current one isn't even half empty, but she needs to be somewhere else.

Danny, miracle of miracles, doesn't say anything as she walks away.

Steph rests her forehead against the cool enamel of the fridge door. It's true enough, is the thing: she wasn't ever any good with kids, but she never wanted to be, not until Grace. And seeing Danny so soft with her, well, Steph was hopeful that maybe he wouldn't be such a fucking asshole about this kind of thing, that he was one of those guys whose daughters make them see some of the problems most dudes ignore so easily without even knowing they're doing it.

Clearly she was wrong.

Danny, because he doesn't know when to leave well enough alone, pads into the kitchen.

"So," he says without preamble. "I pissed you off."

Steph considers banging her head against the fridge door, but she doesn't need to give herself head trauma just because some dude, even if it is Danny, is a jerk about her being terrible at being a girl and doing all the things that are supposed to come naturally, or whatever that bullshit is.

Steph turns around and leans against the fridge.

"I've never been good with kids," she says, hitting at the heart of the issue. Stephanie McGarrett is many things, but a coward is not one of them. "I didn't give that up to be a SEAL."

"Okay," Danny says. "So they didn't reprogram you, there goes the robot-SEAL theory."

He's not taking this seriously. Steph is suddenly angry about it.

"Fuck you, Danno," she bites out. "I'm not programmed or required to be good with kids. I don't have to wear heels, or makeup, or skirts, or have fucking long hair. It's my life. I get to make those choices, and you can fuck right off for even thinking about judging them."

He looks surprised, but it's the kind of surprise Steph has seen before, the why is the girl mad at me, she must be PMS-ing face. It's time to go for a killing blow. Steph knows just where to hit, and chooses her words carefully.

"You going to tell Grace she's a failure if she doesn't want kids someday?" Steph asks.

Danny's face goes blank.

"What about if she wants to be a soccer player, or an astronaut? Join the Marines? You going to tell her, no, you have to stay home like mommy, be pretty like mommy, take care of your husband’s kids and do charity fundraisers? Maybe she'll even trade up her husband for a wealthier model, like mommy."

Danny flinches.

"You going to tell her any of that, Danno? You going to say, fuck what you want, be a good girl and make yourself miserable? Because I can tell you, the minute you say that, she's gone."

Danny doesn't say anything for what feels like forever - probably about forty seven seconds. Steph waits him out.

"Okay," Danny says finally. "I – yeah. Dick move. I'd punch anyone who said those things to Grace."

Steph is prepared to take it: it's better than she usually gets.

"Sorry, babe," Danny says, surprising her. "You don't usually care."

Steph bites back a laugh, and hears herself say: "I don't get to care, Danno."

He looks baffled, and she tips back the remaining half of her beer before she continues.

"I can be the Navy SEAL whose unit comes out alive, or I can be the girl," she says. "I don't get a choice." She shrugs, because he looks alarmingly open right now, and she doesn't get to have that kind of sympathy, not now, not ever. She looks away, and grabs another beer from the fridge.

"Grace deserves to get a choice, at least," she says, looking into the refrigerator instead of back at Danny. "Talk to her about where she wants to go to school," she says. "Listen to her. And get the fuck out of my house."

Miracle of miracles, Danny goes.

* * *

Maybe Steph is on higher alert than usual, but when they go over to the HPD a few days later, well, she’s going to have to start sending over Kono, or maybe recruit a newbie who hasn’t pissed off the whole of Honolulu’s police department, because she’s pretty sure she’s not going to be welcomed back anytime soon.

In her defense, Makani copped a feel in the not very crowded elevator. So maybe putting a fish-gutting knife to his throat was overkill. She likes to be sure her message gets across.

If she happened to make eye contact with every woman in the room while she demanded that this not happen again, because she’d be back if it did, well, Steph has always been a bit of an optimist in this regard. Most of the women on the force seem to be the grin and bear it types, or the matrons who take it as a well-natured compliment because boys will be boys, but Steph won’t leave it there if she has a choice.

Danny sees the pile of papers she drops on his desk and then, after a look at her face, just shakes his head.

“Fucking HPD,” he says.

Chin makes a face, and Steph just raises an eyebrow. Danny, who appears to have opened the top folder, yelps.

“A fish-scaling blade?” He yells. “ _STEPHANIE JOAN MCGARRETT_.”

“It was Makani,” Steph says to Chin. "He got a little too up close and personal. My hand didn’t slip. No harm, no foul, right?”

It’s the same logic the guys use about harassing women. Steph figures they can either learn to live with it, decide she’s a stone-cold crazy bitch, or change their behavior.

She’s under no illusions about which one it will be, mind you, but Steph’s been a stone-cold bitch for most of her life. She probably wouldn’t know what to do if people stopped calling her that.

* * *

Danny doesn’t get the chance to finish Steph’s HPD paperwork for the fish-scaling knife incident in HPD, because the governor calls and drops news of suspected human traffickers trying to move in on the gap Sang Min left in the island’s black market.

Even Kamekona’s leads turn up nothing useful, and Steph has to resort to calling Cath to tail a few container ships before they can nail it down, by which point the team has been staggering their shifts to watch the cameras Toast hacked into for them, and drinking what Max has told them are medically inadvisable amounts of coffee. Max launches into a description of the effects of painkillers and acidic beverages on the lining of the stomach and upper small intestine before Steph physically pushes him out of the office.

“Tox screens on the dead bodies, Max,” she says. “Come back when you’ve found something.”

Because this couldn’t just be human trafficking: this had to be the kind that preys on young girls looking for a better life, and then rapes them and leaves them to rot in a closed shipping container for so long one of the bodies had to be removed in liquefying pieces.

Steph might be taking this a little bit personally, after that last mission she took in Niger, the one where the militants were too embedded to save the girls she'd met in town, but she’s not telling anyone. If she drinks a bit more coffee, signs up for a few more shifts than anyone else, well, they’re good, her team, but they're still civilians. She’s got the BUD/S training and the know-how. She got through Hell Week. It only makes sense.

She must look worse than she thinks, though, because even Danny doesn’t call her on the grueling pace she sets, just works harder, digs deeper, scans more and more recordings, transcripts, anything they can get their hands on.

The case finally wraps up mid-afternoon on the following Saturday. None of the team has had more than eight hours of sleep in the last few days, but they're too wired on adrenaline to rest, so Steph invites them over to her place for beer and maybe something on the grill. Danny brings steaks, Chin brings beer. Kono brings pineapple and beer, because she's a delightful troll of a woman.

"What?" She asks, all innocent face and ridiculously girlish figure. "You're missing out, Danny. Grilled pineapple is the best."  
Danny grabs a beer and goes out to the lanai, muttering something under his breath.

Steph high-fives Kono and shows her how to sight down the blade while she uses a machete to lop the tops off the pineapples.

"Learned it in Laos," Steph says. "Some of the fisherwomen there knew their way around knives, let me tell you."

"Remind me yet again never to piss either of you off," Chin says from the doorway. "Danny wants to know how you want the steaks?"

"Still alive," Steph says, the way she always does. "Tell him to take them off the grill about an hour before he thinks he should, hey?"

Chin grins, grabs a beer, and agrees. Danny over-grills the steaks, the way he always does, and everyone bitches a little bit, and it's a good evening. Steph has been running on fumes for longer than the team, has been forcing them to go home and rest, to curl up on the sofas in their offices and nap. She can handle it a little longer, though: if she got through Hell Week on three hours of sleep, four or five days of catnaps and minimal physical activity won't kill her.

After dinner Kono pulls out a bottle of her mom's favorite sake with her best shit-eating grin. Steph is self-aware enough to know this is a bad idea, and now that the adrenaline is wearing off, she's also tired enough not to care. She tips the first drink back, savoring the refined taste of it as it slides smooth and hot down her throat, and settles in for a long evening.

Some time later, Chin and Kono get a cab home. When Steph comes out of the house again, Danny is sitting on the blanket she put down on the beach a while ago. He's watching the moonlight over the waves and complaining about sand getting everywhere in a sotto-voce monologue that Steph finds oddly soothing.

"Come here, you giant. Stop looming," Danny says, and Steph settles beside him.

"Not my fault you're a midget," Steph says, because that's what she always says.

"Midget, she says," Danny says. "I'll have you know I'm a perfectly normal height for a person. Not everyone can be a Valkyrie, it's against the law of averages or something."

And that's a new one from Danny, calling her a Valkyrie. It's oddly complimentary, if violent. Steph thinks she likes it.

"You'll just have to be tall for both of us," Danny is saying. "It's okay, you're good at it, you know?"

Steph doesn't know, exactly, but she makes a humming sound in agreement and watches the moonlight sparkle across the surf. Danny's presence is a warm radiating line beside her, and she wants to lean against him, the way she always does. She's definitely drunk, though, because she doesn't just shelve the thought, lock it in the box along with any inconvenient feelings, the ones she's never allowed herself to have.

Tonight, though, she wants more than she usually does. Steph knows Danny can hold her up, can drag her out of burning buildings or off cargo ships. He's stronger than he looks, is her Danno, and Steph has always liked that. Danny is saying something about how Steph shouldn't let it go to her head, she's got plenty of room for improvement, police procedure is a thing for a reason. Steph closes her eyes and just leans against him, letting him take her weight without warning.

"Don't pass out on me, you goof," Danny says, but he wraps an arm around her shoulders. "Seriously, Steph, say something, I'm not hauling your ass into the house, I will leave you here to sleep in the sand if you pass out on me."

"'m not passing out," Steph says. "Just comfortable, is all."

"Just comfortable, she says," Danny says. "You weigh a ton, babe. Seriously, were you raised by wolves, would it kill you to ask first?"

But he doesn't push her off, doesn't make her move, or say anything else about it, just goes back to complaining about the sand. Steph tucks her head onto his shoulder and closes her eyes and lets herself pretend, just for a minute, that this is something she's allowed to have.

* * *

Work that Monday is surprisingly normal. Or, well, it would be if Steph could clear her head the way she's always been able to in the past. Danny tells Kono she's a menace and gets a grin in return before they go off to file forms, Chin works some kind of computer wizardry to track down their next few cases. Steph hides in her office and does her best to pretend she doesn't know what Danny smells like under his cologne, what the weight of his arm feels like over her shoulders.

"So," Danny says some time later, leaning against Steph's office door-frame. "You've been quiet."

"Paperwork," Steph says, gesturing at her desk. She usually leaves Danny to clear up the ends of their cases, but this was a good way to hide. Also, if they don’t get these forms back to HPD about her little fish-knife incident, they really might have to bribe someone, and then IA will be on their asses on top of everything else that’s gone sideways recently.

Of course, trying to fill out these damn forms solo happens to have been giving her a renewed appreciation of the mind-numbing detail involved in police work, because some of these forms are all but completely impenetrable, even by Naval Intelligence standards.

"Paperwork," Danny says, with a raised eyebrow. "Now I know the world is ending. Legitimately ending, not just the exploding nonsense that tells me it must be Thursday again."

"I can do paperwork," Steph says, a little offended. She does paperwork from time to time. Admittedly it's usually when Danny plunks it on her desk and threatens to quit, but it's not like she's an idiot, okay, she just prioritizes the things she's best at.

"No one said you can't," Danny agrees, too easily. "I'm just saying, you voluntarily doing paperwork, it's like one of the signs of the Apocalypse."

He looks like he's winding up for a long rant, and Steph has never been so glad to get a call from the governor in her life.

"You're in luck," she says when she hangs up. "Kidnapping on Lanai, and we've been tapped in. You get to do the paperwork later."

Danny protests, but he trails after her out to the car, and they keep up a mostly normal banter the whole way out to Lanai, making phone calls and getting up to speed while Chin and Kono hack bank accounts and look into finances and so on to give them background material on this guy.

The victim is some rich kid, unremarkable at first glance, but he's got more spending money than his parents have been giving him, and it really looks like something else is going on.

"My money's on drug dealing," Danny says. "Plenty of those in Jersey, rich kids who think they're too posh to buy from guys on the street, set up for themselves."

Given that the kidnapper is a known associate of the Yakuza, who have a handle on drugs on Lanai, this makes sense.

Something about it doesn't feel quite right, though: a retribution hit might try to scare him, but this has the feel of a warning to his parents, or else why bother contacting them directly?

It turns out the kid is not only drug dealing, he knocked up the daughter of his contact in the Yakuza, because he's stupider than anyone could have predicted. They get him back alive by the skin of their teeth after Kono does some exquisite hacking and they find the kid tied to a chair execution-style in a warehouse full of rotting crates of machinery.

They take the warehouse with governor-mandated SWAT help. Steph goes in up top and nearly gets shot by friendly goddamn fire because SWAT hasn't been trained as well as her team. So what if it's against police procedure, she's not about to let the kid get shot so her paperwork is easier. So they don't expect her to jump into the middle of the fray when she gets a shot at the leader and one of them doesn't pull his shots quite fast enough.

It's all fine until a bomb goes off and a crate explodes just behind Danny and knocks him flat. Steph goes into a near fugue state, takes out the Yakuza with a series of neat headshots and is over to his side before the dust has even finished settling.

"We've got this, boss," Kono says. "You take Danny to the hospital, he's going to be cranky as fuck."

Chin nods, and the SWAT team looks at Steph like she's the one who's a menace.

"Great," Steph says. "I'll have my cell. Kid's already lawyered up, so, you know, do the thing."

Kono will know what she means. Chin will rein her in. It'll be fine. Steph hops into the ambulance next to Danny, who is already bitching about the neck brace they strapped onto him. He sees her, eyes tracking fine, and starts chewing into her for jumping, what is wrong with her, does she not know that gravity is a thing?

Steph relaxes into it and lets the EMTs do their work.

They get to the hospital and Danny is loaded into a private room, put in a gown, his scrapes tended to, and then Steph is let back in to wait with him until they can see to his back, where some of the crates went into splinters.

Danny spends the wait on his face complaining about just about everything except the pain, because they definitely loaded him up on the pain meds when they put an IV in. Stephs checks her phone, steps out once in a while to call Chin, and listens as Danny makes less and less sense. She's sent out of the room when the doctor examines Danny, and let back in when the doctor is paged somewhere else after a fair bit of yelling.

"He can be released into someone's care, but he's not fit to go home under his own power," the nurse says.

"I'm taking him home," Steph says, and Danny pushes up on his elbows, sputtering.

"You're not going back to that rat-trap," Steph insists. "I have a perfectly good guest bed, Cath vouches for it, you can sleep without tweaking your back out of line."

Danny looks like he wants to grumble, but he's too out of it on the good drugs.

"That's fine," the nurse says. "I'll just get his discharge papers sorted out, then."

Danny bitches in a sort of resigned way until Steph hands him a folder and threatens him with a wheelchair if he doesn't shut up and put on his pants.

"We'll pack you a bag tomorrow," Steph tells him when they get to the parking lot and Danny remembers they're not going to his apartment. She all but bundles him into the passenger seat of the Camaro. "You can wear my clothes to sleep in for one night, it won't kill you."

Danny mumbles something under his breath, and Steph ignores him. If she drives a little more carefully than she usually would on the way home, well, Danny's too stoned to notice and make fun of her for it.

Steph lets Danny lean on her and gets him settled in Marky's old room. Her t-shirts should fit fine, so she grabs an old Naval Intelligence shirt just to hear him complain in the morning, and knocks before she goes back in.

Danny is still sitting where she left him, staring vaguely into space.

"Danno," Steph says. "Hey, you've gotta get changed, bud. No one sleeps in a tie."

Danny looks up.

"Hurts," he says, and Steph realizes that – of course – the jagged cut across his shoulder means he's gonna be in pain moving his arms.

"Okay," she says. "But if you give me shit for this, I'm turning Kono loose on you."

Steph unties Danny's tie and unbuttons his shirt while he blinks placidly and doesn't move so much as a muscle. She gets the cuffs and pulls the shirt off down his arms, wondering how much stubbornness he was running on to get the damn thing on in the first place.

"Ow," Danny says when she holds up the t-shirt. Steph looks at the bandages.

"Gotta do it," she says. "The tape won't hold up overnight by itself."

Danny makes a face, but he lets her draw his arms through the sleeves. Steph kneels and takes off his shoes and socks.

When she looks up, Danny is staring at her in something like shock.

"What?" She asks. "No shoes in bed, you idiot. This is a real mattress, real sheets, not some fold-out monstrosity."

"I have real sheets," Danny protests.

"Sure you do," Steph agrees, and Danny subsides too easily at the agreement.

"Good," he says. He still looks confused, though.

"Okay," Steph says. "You can get your own pants off, hey?"

Danny looks at her, all rumpled hair and blackening eye and painkiller-soft expression.

"Good," Steph says, and flees the room before she does anything stupid, like kiss him or draw him into bed with her, or trap him in her house forever and never let him go. Danny would be the crankiest house-husband in the history of the world.

God help her, Steph isn’t sure she cares.

* * *

Danny is cranky when he comes down into the kitchen in the morning, which is partially because they sent him home with limited painkillers and Steph has them with her on the kitchen counter, and partially, as Steph guessed, because she put him in a Navy t-shirt.

"Do I look like I want to be on a ship full of angry overcompensating dudes?" Danny is saying. "Seriously, babe, if I wanted to be in the Navy, I would have enlisted on my own time. I don't need you playing dress-up with me just so you'll feel like you're back home on some horrible death-trap of a ship."

He takes a breath, and Steph can tell by the length of the pause, the angle of his chin, that whatever comes next isn't going to be just idle griping. She wonders if Rachel ever developed that skill, or if their marriage fell apart in part because Rachel took everything equally seriously. Danny's 90% bullshit, but the 10% is important to him.

"You know I'd be fine at home," Danny says, wandering in and grabbing at the pills on the counter. "Seriously, what is this, some kind of intervention, because I know you hate my apartment, but you don't get to drag me around on a string, I'm a grown man."

"Danny," Steph interrupts, because he's winding up for a long one, but that was the heart of it, right there. "You were so stoned you couldn't get your shirt off. I'd do the same for Chin or Kono."

She'd take them back to their own places, probably, but their own places aren't shitholes with angry collapsing sofa beds, because they're not paying child support to a bitchy ex-wife who demanded a divorce, married up, and still insists on bleeding Danny dry for money she doesn't need.

Danny doesn't answer, and Steph sees he's struggling with the cover of the pill bottle.

"Oh, give that here," she says. "You're benched today. We're all off. We got the guy, Kono's already surfing, Chin is probably sleeping in like a sane person."

"Hah!" Danny says. "See," he says, pointing at Steph. "Not sane. You've –" he stares at her, head unmoving, and Steph can see he's in pain by the curve of his shoulders. "You've already been swimming," he accuses. "How fucking early did you get up?"

Steph hands him a mug of coffee and his painkillers instead of answering.

Steph swam a few lengths, probably more than Danny would call healthy, but that's every morning. She might be off active duty, but she could be recalled, and there's no call to get soft. Five-O is active enough to keep her reflexes up, but she won't let a team down by being weak in the field. She wouldn’t do that even if she were a dude: she can’t do it, because she refuses to be The Girl on any team, no matter what. Swimming in Hawaii is familiar, comfortable, a nice routine compared to other workouts she’s engaged in to the same end.

"Are you trying to give me an ulcer," Danny says, but he takes the painkillers, washes them down with his milky-sweet coffee. "What am I saying, have you seen how you drive, you're always trying to give me an ulcer."

It’s more likely that his dietary habits will cause him problems, and Steph is secretly on Grace’s side on that one, but Steph just hands him a plate of eggs and toast, and herds him toward the kitchen table with a hand at the small of his back.

"Just eat," she says. "You're not wearing yesterday's clothes all day without bitching me out about it, so we'll have to get some stuff from your place after breakfast, yeah?"

"You're dragging me back here after, aren't you," Danny says through a mouthful of eggs. "You're worse than my mom sometimes, babe, and that's saying something."

"Yeah," Steph says, heart in her throat for the comparison to Ma Williams. She knows how much Danny loves his mother.

"Well, someone's gotta look after you. You're too dumb to do it on your own."

* * *

Danny's back gets infected despite Steph's insistence on soap and water every time she changes the bandages, and it turns out the attending didn't get out a splinter from the warehouse crates, and it's been working its way under his scapula this whole time and rotting away in his trapezius, letting out god only knows what kinds of chemical toxins.

"You what?" She demands in the hospital. "Excuse me, please explain that again." She glares at the doctor who saw Danny the first time, a stocky young man who glares up at her for a moment before visibly deflating. "Use small words," Steph says.

"Very small words, and tell me how you left a jagged and splintered piece of wood the size of my thumbnail inside my partner's shoulder without noticing it was still there."

"He insisted he was fine," the doctor says. Steph gives him her best I Am Unimpressed, Cadet, glare.

"He's a cop." Steph says. "He's a shorter-than-average, blond haole cop. What the hell do they teach you in medical school? Is he going to tell you the truth about how much pain he's in?"

The doctor mutters something about patient confidentiality.

"That's bullshit and we both know it," Steph says, feeling herself building up a full head of steam. "I'm not asking for his medical records."

She doesn't have to ask for his medical records, anyway. They're all too easy to hack.

The doctor opens his mouth and Steph cuts him off.

"I'm not asking you to break confidentiality. I'm not asking anything about the patient. I'm asking about you. I'm asking you: what the hell possessed you to release someone with that kind of wound to ambulatory care without even a thorough once-over by someone who can tell when there's a fucking domino under his skin. And I'm not just asking. I'm telling you that if you don't have an answer for me about why something this serious slipped right past your team, and if you don't tell me exactly how and why it's never going to happen again, the governor is going to hear about the kind of care you and your team provide to members of law enforcement. And I'm telling you, this is not going to look good on your CV."

The doctor straightens his spine and opens his mouth, and Steph squares her shoulders. She's not in uniform today, just cargo pants and a t-shirt, but she's got easily four inches on the dude, and probably twenty pounds of sheer muscle.

"Yes?" Steph asks, sure her face is set in her best _Do Not Disappoint Me, Baby SEAL_ expression. "Do you have an answer for me, or do I have a phone call in my future?"

The doctor slumps visibly, all the fight going out of him. He looks younger, suddenly, and if Danny hadn't been left with a pocket of gangrene, Steph might feel bad about bullying the kid.

"We were short-handed," the doctor admits. "There's a hiring freeze, and there was a double-pileup on the main drag, and a pair of kids in trauma. Your partner bitched about testing, and he seemed fine, so we told him to come back the next day for a check-up."

"That wasn't in his paperwork," Steph says. She read the paperwork before Danny woke up.

"He said it didn't need to be," the doctor said. "I just – there were kids in the trauma center who didn't have that kind of time."

Steph stares at him, long and hard, and then nods.

"All right," she says. "Is that hiring freeze still on?"

The doctor looks surprised. He blinks, owlish and slow. He'd be dead inside two minutes in combat, Steph thinks.

"Um," he says. Now he just sounds confused. "Yes?"

"Okay," Steph says, and makes a note to talk to the governor about that, because if Five-O is getting substandard care, so are cops. Besides, it was kind of her fault the bomb went off and slammed Danny into the stack of pallets, and getting the hospital system fixed is almost like an apology, right?

Steph's always been better with actions than with words when it really counts, anyway.

* * *

When they don't get back to Danny's apartment after that, well, Steph leverages the whole "gangrenous hole in your back" thing for all she's worth. Kono makes faces at her, and Steph ignores it, because she knows she's being stupid and playing house, and it's not fair to Danny or to herself. She still won't let her partner sleep on a fold-out couch when he's got limited range of motion in his arm, and a giant hole in his upper back. The fact that his trapezius is mostly intact is, frankly, a miracle.

Besides, listening to him bitch about physical therapy is a joy in and of itself.

"I'm going home," Danny announces one day at the office.

"Okay, give me five," Steph calls back. Someone – could be Kono or Chin – makes a muffled noise. Steph decides to ignore it.

"No, you Neanderthal," Danny yells. "I'm not going back to your house, I'm going home. To my apartment, you know, the place where I live. My house."

"Your house is a shithole," Steph says, stacking papers. "We've had this conversation. You'll jack up your back sleeping on that thing and have to start PT all over again."

"Conversation, she says," Danny shoots back. "Conversation? No. You have taken my car keys and all but thrown me over your shoulder and –" he waves his hands more dramatically than ever "– don't think I don't see that glint in your eye, don't you even think about it, you are not picking me up like some kind of damsel in distress!"

"Don't be ridiculous, Danny," Kono chimes in. "Boss wouldn't do that to you."

Danny looks momentarily mollified, until Chin pokes his head around a door frame and finishes the thought.

"Not until you're healed up, brah," he adds. "Have you heard her bitching about your shoulder?"

Danny shoots them both his best disappointed parent glare, which washes off like water off a duck's back. He shakes his head, but they've clearly broken his stride.

"Let's go," Steph says. "You can pick up whatever it is you want, and you can see if the sofa bed is really as comfortable as you think it is, okay?"

Danny grumbles the whole way out to the Camaro, but he gives Steph the keys, and provides only the usual running commentary on her driving on the way over.

When they get within sight of the apartment block, Steph pulls over behind a truck, holds up a hand.

"Wait," she says. "Something off."

Danny looks at her, and, miracle of miracles, he doesn't argue. Steph gets out, crouching low with binoculars, and catalogs the scene: too many guys loitering for this time of day, and most with line of sight to Danny's door. She's about to call it minor gang activity when one of the guys moves and she can see the edges of a really distinctive tattoo. Well, Steph thinks. Shit.

"Triad," Steph says when she gets back into the car. "Pretty sure. They've been staking it out probably since that last case."

Danny deflates visibly in the seat next to her.

"I –"

"You're not bringing Grace here, that's for sure," Steph says, because that's what he was thinking. Danny talks a good game about survival but there's only one person whose safety he really worries about this much, and it's his daughter.

"Think we can get in?"

Steph shrugs.

"How much of a fuss you want to make?" She asks, with a pointed glare at Danny's shoulder. "You want to tear those stitches, go back. Maybe they'll leave a cell phone in there this time."

Danny laughs.

"Okay," he says. "Back to yours. No shoulder-tossing, though."

Steph forces a smile, and resolutely does not imagine what it would be like to lift Danny up and into her bed.

* * *

The next weekend is going to be a Grace weekend, and apparently that makes Danny itch to have things sorted out.

"I can't just keep – bringing her over here like this!" Danny says. "It's not fair to her, she deserves some kind of permanence."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Danny," Steph says, words she's been biting out spilling out of her in a rush. "Just move in. It's not like I don't have space for both of you, and you won't have to worry about the Triad, or your car getting keyed, or your neighbors hotboxing the place on Grace weekends."

Danny stares at her.

"You're serious," he says. Then he reaches up and pokes her in the forehead.

"What?" Steph demands.

"Concussion?" Danny asks. "I mean, seriously, do you hear the words that are coming out of your mouth right now?"

"You, Grace, my house, enough space," Steph says. "It's a two-car driveway, Grace can use the private beach whenever she wants. Or whenever someone can watch her, you know, so you don't freak out about drowning or sharks or whatever it is you think is going to get her in six inches of water."

"What about Cath?" Danny asks.

"So she sleeps in the study when she's on leave," Steph says, because she knows Cath will have words with her about the stupidity of this whole idea. That's for an entirely different reason than Danny thinks, and anyway it's not Danny's problem if Steph has a crush on him. She's got it under control. "Or if it's not a Grace weekend, we'll put her in that room. She can handle a little pink."

"A little pink, she says," Danny says. "A little pink. Do you have any idea – Grace's room at Rachel's is like Barbie fucking puked ruffles, do you get what you are signing up for here?"

Steph doubts Grace picked all of that herself, thinks probably Rachel had more of a hand in it than anyone else. But even if

Grace does want a pink wedding cake of a room, well, Steph can do that.

"So?" Steph says. "We'll let her paint it, choose a color. My old room could use a coat of paint anyway."

Danny stares at her.

"I –" he says. "Let me think about it, hey?"

Steph shrugs.

"I'm not going anywhere," she says.

* * *

Danny agrees in part, Steph thinks, because she doesn't comment when he asks Grace about it, and doesn't pester him. Some ops need a light hand, she knows, and Danny needs to feel like this is his decision, and Grace's, not something else being demanded of them by the vagaries of other people's lives and choices.

"What do you think, Monkey?" Danny asks on their next weekend – his next weekend. Steph doesn't get a Grace weekend, she just hovers on Danny's. Steph doesn't go out onto the lanai, just hovers in the study pretending to poke through something at her father's desk.

"Steph says I'd get my own room?" Grace asks. "Can it be green?"

Steph was sure the pink wedding cake look was mostly Rachel, but having it confirmed makes her feel triumphant all over again.

"Sure, kiddo," Danny replies. "But ask Steph, okay? It's her house."

"Steph!" Grace hollers, and Steph is proud of the lungs on her even as she understands a little better why Rachel wants to push etiquette lessons.

"Steph!" Grace yells again. "Come out here! You can stop hiding now!"

Steph steps out onto the lanai with a grin, because of course Grace knew she was in the background while Danny was totally focused on his daughter.

"Training to be a midshipman?" She asks, and Grace looks at her funny. Steph makes a note to teach her what a midshipman is at some point, or what one used to be.

"Danno says we can move in with you and I can have my own bedroom but I have to ask you first: can we paint it green?"

It's great seeing what kids choose to focus on: the move is no big deal, but the paint color is huge.

"Sure," Steph says. "Whatever color you want."

Grace squeals and throws her arms around Steph's waist. She's got a surprisingly good grip for a kid her size, and Steph puts a hand on the top of her head and just holds on.

* * *

Moving Danny out of his apartment is easier than Steph expected, mostly because she never let herself think about how much of his stuff has migrated to her house, or how little stuff he brought with him to Hawaii in the first place.

"This is it?" Steph asks, holding a stack of three book boxes that are apparently all Danny brought with him.

"Libraries, Steph," Danny says. "They're this amazing place where you can borrow books and then give them back when you're done."

Steph gets it better than she'd admit, honestly: she hasn't had much stuff of her own since she joined the Navy. She can head almost anywhere in the world with the contents of her pockets and do her job, settle in for as long as it will take. She'd kind of hoped Danny had more roots here, maybe.

Grace has already been leaving things behind in Steph's old room, so Danny and Rachel just arrange for her to come over with a larger suitcase on her next weekend, now that she has her own room. Danny emerges from that conversation in a black mood.

The bigger problem is moving them into Steph's house, because she hasn't really moved in herself. The house is full of the detritus of the lives of four people, a kind of time-machine back to her teenage years.

"Okay," Steph says, when they get to her driveway. She's planned this out. She can execute a plan, especially when she has backup. "Full boxes stay in the car. Empty boxes come with us."

Danny doesn't smart off, just grabs the flat book boxes and follows her upstairs to her old bedroom. Steph waves Danny at Mark's old room.

"Go nuts," she says. "Check inside the closet and under the mattress, just in case. Chuck anything that's obviously garbage, Mark doesn't care about anything he left here."

If he cared, he'd have written back to any of Steph's texts or answered any of her calls. She knows that's petty, but Mark still hasn't come back since the funeral, hasn't gotten in touch, and she's pretty mad about it when she stops to think.

Danny nods, and heads in.

Steph opens the door of her childhood bedroom, boxes in tow, and doesn't allow herself to think too hard about what she's removing from the shelves. A few framed pictures are put aside, because it might be nice to change up the ones in the living room, but the rest can go in the attic crawlspace.

"Okay," Steph says, when she's cleared the room, re-made the bed, and it looks cold and impersonal. There are three boxes of things to keep, a mirror of Danny's possessions.

Danny peers in.

"Your brother had some seriously inventive hiding spots," Danny says. "God, I don't even know how to dispose of some of his shit."

"I do," Steph says.

"Of course you do," Danny says, and he sounds almost fond. "Science SEAL strikes again."

Steph takes the boxes up to the crawl space while Danny moves into Mark's old room, and Steph fires up the grill for tuna steaks and vegetables and pineapple, much to Danny's disappointment.

Day one, Steph thinks, wasn't so bad. Cath is still going to yell at her for inviting the man she's falling for to live with her, but she can manage it.

* * *

A few weeks later, Steph isn't so sure she can manage things, keep them as compartmentalized as she had planned. Danny's a decent enough housemate, grumpy in the morning and not particularly neat, but she finds it more amusing than anything else.

The bigger problem is how well and thoroughly he and Grace have wormed their way into Steph's life.

Case in point: shared school pickups. It's a Friday and Grace is heading out of school with a friend as Steph sits in the car waiting for her. Danny is stuck 'helping' Kono with paperwork, because the two of them picked a fight with HPD in a way that got back to the governor and got Steph raked over the coals and signed up for a workshop on inter-departmental cooperation and respectful workplace language and demeanor. To say she's pissed would be an understatement, so yeah, they're doing a lot of paperwork.

"Oooh, Steph is picking me up today," Grace says to her friend. "She drives awesome."

The friend says something in a quieter voice, with an upward-inflection at the end: a question.

"Steph," Grace says. "I've told you about her before. She's my dad's partner."

The girl nods, and Steph is pretty sure she's misunderstood what kind of partner Steph is to Danny. But Steph just unfolds herself from the car as the girls approach and bends down for a hug, which Grace provides with no hint of self-consciousness.

"Steph McGarrett," Steph says, holding out a hand to Grace's friend. "Pleasure to meet you."

The friend introduces herself as Alicia Bloom, and she cranes her head back when Steph straightens up to her full height.

"How do you fit in the car?" Alicia asks, and then claps a hand over her mouth. Etiquette lessons are definitely not on the books at this school, and Steph smiles.

"I put the seat all the way back," Steph says. It's a better question than some people have asked her in the past.

"Danno doesn't let anyone but Steph drive his car," Grace says, like this is a fact of the universe. She looks up at Steph, curious but just as clearly unworried. "Where is Danno?"

Steph slings Grace's backpack in the back seat, and climbs in the car herself, letting Grace get the passenger door and seat belt on her own. Danny still does it for her, which is starting to drive Grace crazy.

"Paperwork," she says. "I told him he'd either get it done at the office tonight, or he'd go swimming with me tomorrow morning."

Grace giggles, and waves goodbye at Alicia while Steph heads out of the school driveway.

"So he's gonna do it all tonight," Grace guesses.

"Kono's helping," Steph admits.

"Ooooh," Grace says. "Did she punch someone again?"

Sometimes Steph wonders if she's a bad influence on Grace. Then something like this comes up, and she's reminded that if anyone is a bad influence on Grace, it's definitely Kono.

"Two someones," Steph says. "And Danny was bad too, so I'm making them do all the paperwork together."

Grace looks thoughtful for a moment.

"But they were bad guys?" She asks.

"Pretty much so," Steph admits, because she doesn't want to explain HPD internal politics to Grace. Grace would probably follow all the twists and turns, ask smart questions, and come up with some kind of blackmail. Then Rachel would never let Danny hear the end of it. "But you know what Danno says. You can't just punch the bad guys, you have to follow the rules."

It's a little hilarious, or maybe offensive, that Danny uses almost the same words to explain it to both Grace and to Steph and the rest of the Five-O team when they skirt around the edges of due process, but Grace just nods.

"Okay," she says. "Can we get shave ice? I want to get Kamekona to play poker with me again."

Steph laughs, and heads toward Kamekona's.

"I can get you a shave ice," she promises. "You're on your own for poker."

"Okay," Grace says. "I bet I can get us free shave ice for weeks."

"Not taking that bet," Steph says. She knows better than to take on Grace, whose poker face would do a CIA agent proud. If Kamekona takes her on again, he's got only himself to blame.

"You're no fun," Grace pouts, but she's hiding a smile as she looks out the window of the car at the passing trees and buildings.

"I'm no fun," Steph says back at her. "Well, I guess if I'm no fun, we can't have shave ice."

"Noooo!" Grace wails.

"Hm," Steph says, and pretends to consider it. "I suppose we could have a little fun while Danno does his paperwork. What do you think about pizza for dinner tonight?"

"With pineapple?" Grace asks. "Ham and pineapple, and half pepperoni for Danno so he only complains a little bit."

"It's a plan," Steph says, and takes Grace to Kamekona's, where she wins free shave ice for a month.

"Your daughter is adorable," a tourist man says. Steph blinks at him before the words sink in.

"I'm babysitting," she says. It's easier than explaining that Grace is her partner's kid who happens to live with her.

"Even better," the man says, leaning into her space. He already smells drunk at four in the afternoon. Fucking tourists, Steph thinks. "What about some fun once you're done with the kid?"

Steph refuses to punch drunk tourists in front of Grace, no matter how much she wants to deck this guy for invading her personal space on a day that was already on thin ice after her talk with the governor.

"How about not," she suggests. "Maybe you should drink some water, try some shave ice. The daily special's usually good. Hydration's important in this climate."

"Bitch," the man spits. His breath is tinged with bad whiskey and pineapple.

Steph sees Grace coming back over, and angles her body away from him.

"Hey," the guy says, leaning in closer. "Don't you ignore me."

"I'm going to have to get my friend's daughter," Steph says.

The man reaches over puts a hand on her waist.

"Don't be like that," he says, accent thickening. "We could have a good time, eh?"

Fucking drunk Canadians, Steph thinks.

"No thank you," she says. "Take your hands off me."

She catches Grace's eye and cocks her head toward the car, indicating that Grace should head that way. Grace ignores her and walks over to where the guy still has one hand creeping down toward the curve of Steph's ass.

"Leave her alone," Grace says. "You're being very rude."

"It's none of your business, little girl," the guys says, and gives Steph's ass a squeezing grope.

It's really not Steph's fault she has a mean right hook. And really, there was no way she could have possibly known the guy had a glass jaw and would go over like a sack of bricks.

"Okay," Steph says once they're home with a pizza. "You know your dad's gonna tell you that's not the best way to handle that kind of situation, right?"

Grace nods.

"Here's something he won't tell you," Steph says. "Sometimes that's the only way to make saying no stick. If you have to choose between being safe and being polite, you choose being safe every time, you hear me?"

Grace looks thoughtful, and Danny emerges from out back.

"What's this about being safe?" Danny asks. "Steph, were you driving like a heart attack again?"

"No," Grace says. "We went for shave ice, and I won free cones for a month!"

Danny looks at his daughter, who wilts a little despite her admirable effort to change the subject. Steph gives her a little nod over his shoulder.

"There was a rude man at the shave ice place," Grace admits. "He grabbed her, so Steph punched him."

"Modeling violent assault for my daughter?" Danny asks. There's an edge to the question. If it were almost anything else about Grace, Steph would back down, because she's not Grace's parent. But she won't back down on this.

"Modeling affirmative consent," she shoots back. "Guy grabs you, gropes you, and doesn't take no for an answer? You stop using words."

Grace comes over and hugs Steph around the waist, which feels like an unexpected prize, like Steph has won something without even trying to do so.

"He was mean," she says. "Steph was real nice, and he wasn't." She wrinkles her nose. "I think he was drunk, too," she says.

"He didn't smell good."

Danny stares at her.

"Okay," Steph cuts in, because she doesn't think Grace wants to explain why she knows what drunk people smell like right now, and Danny can deal with it later, or not at all. Steph is opting out of that particular conversation full-stop. "We brought pizza. Come on, Danno, Grace, let's eat out back."

Later, after Grace has gone to bed, Danny sits on the lanai with Steph.

"So," he says. "You have to punch guys a lot for hitting on you?"

Steph just looks at him. She doesn't have a good answer for that one. No, she doesn't, because most guys don't hit on her. Yes, she does, because the ones who do hit on her are usually not the kind who take a verbal no for an answer. She just shrugs, and takes a sip of her beer.

"Huh," Danny says, standing up from his deck chair. "So," he says, tone light and conversational in a way Steph has learned means trouble. "I figure you've maybe gotten the punching out of your system for the day." He leans down, only one hand on the arm of Steph's chair, careful not to box her in.

"You can just say no," he says. "You don't have to punch me."

And he kisses her.

It's a light peck, just a dry brush of his lips against hers. He pulls back, and Steph stares at him.

"What?" She manages.

"Well," Danny says, dry, not meeting her eyes. "I don't know if you've heard, but when two people like each other very much –"

He's nervous about this. For some reason, that settles Steph's nerves.

"Get back here and do that again," she demands, and pulls Danny down by his tie to kiss her again. He folds into her lap, and she's grateful that the chairs are stronger than they look.

"I'm not quiet," Steph warns him between kisses. "So we're not fucking for the first time with Grace in the next room."

"Oh shit," Danny groans, wrapping a hand around the back of her neck and biting at her lower lip almost viciously. "God, babe, you can't just say things like that."

He's so hard, and Steph wants him so badly, but she wasn't lying, and she doesn't want their first time to be furtive, to be something quiet and hidden. She's had too many one-night stands, and if she only gets this once, she wants the full experience.

"Come on," she says, pushing him to get up. "Up you go, or I'm going to jump you right here, and let me tell you, every teenager in Hawaii can tell you that sand-fucking is not a fun time."

Danny groans and stands, and Steph resists the urge to lean in, bury her face in his groin to feel his dick hard against her lips.

“Shoo,” she says instead, and swats him on the hip.

“Bossy, bossy,” Danny gripes, but he’s smiling as he goes.

* * *

They catch another case that weekend and Danny bundles Grace up early on Sunday and drops her off with the housekeeper at Rachel’s while Steph heads to the crime scene.

It’s a double homicide in a touristy neighborhood: more of a police issue, but Steph supposes it’s an image thing, keeping the governor’s PR department happy by putting his so-called best people on the job despite that being a ridiculous allocation of resources.

They’ve got it mostly wrapped up within a few hours, and Danny bitches about missing time with Grace the whole drive home.

“A Sunday, seriously,” Danny is saying. “I’m not asking for much, mind you. Just a little consideration. Time your crimes better, that is all I’m saying. Maybe give the cops a day off once in a while, everyone take the Lord’s day for rest instead of killing people messily and dragging us out of bed to clean up the mess, you know what I mean?”

Steph pulls the Camaro into its spot in her driveway without a word, unfolds herself from the seat and walks into the house with Danny still complaining on her heels. She stops dead as soon as the door has clicked shut and Danny all but walks into her back, still muttering about the unfairness of Hawaii and how Jersey mobsters mostly at least pretend to go to Mass on Sundays.

“As fascinating as this monologue is,” Steph says, turning around and speaking before she can think better of it. “I can think of better things to do with your mouth.”

Danny, as it turns out, blushes beautifully. He leans up into a hard, biting kiss and wraps his fingers in Steph’s belt loops to jerk her hips close to his.

“You’re a menace,” he says, pressing kisses down the column of her throat. “God, Steph, what you do to me.”

Steph pulls away just a little bit to sneak a hand between them, and Danny groans low and heartfelt.

“Upstairs,” Danny demands. “Come on, upstairs, we’re not fucking in the front hallway like literal animals, my daughter puts her backpack here, what is wrong with you.”

He drags at her belt loops, and Steph follows easily, smiling slightly at the knowledge that Danny seems as affected by this whole thing as she is. When he starts to turn into his room, which is Mark's old room, Steph just drags him into her bedroom.

“Better bed,” she says. “That one always squeaked.”

“God,” Danny says. “No. Don’t tell me why you know that, just come here.”

Danny’s tie falls to the ground, then Steph unbuttons his shirt to reveal the undershirt he still always insists on wearing despite the heat, tugs them both off, sleeves down his arms and undershirt over his head. She’s known Danny is a hairy guy in the abstract: they both get injured enough, and they've been to the beach a time or two or more. Seeing it like this is completely different, though, because she's allowed to look, she's allowed to touch. She runs a careful, tentative hand down his chest and belly and his hips cant forward almost unconsciously.

“God, babe,” Danny gasps. “Killing me.”

“No,” Steph says. She's killed enough people.

“Just -“ Danny manages. “Too many clothes, god, how are you overdressed, you’re never overdressed for a situation, you specialize in being underdressed.”

Steph pulls away and strips her shirt and sports bra off over her head in one smooth gesture, bends to unbuckle her belt and goes down in a crouch to unlace her boots. When she stands back up in just panties, Danny is frozen with one hand on his fly and a look on his face like a flash grenade just went off in the room.

“Fuck me,” Danny says. He sounds almost reverent. Steph steps out of her underwear and goes over to lie down on her bed, leaving her clothes in an untidy heap on the floor.

"That's part of the plan," she says, and stretches just a little bit. Steph may not get to do this kind of thing very often, but she's proud of her body not just for what it can do, but for how it looks. She likes the reactions she can get out of other people with it, and Danny's doing her proud right now, staring like she's the best thing he's ever seen.

Danny strips out of his pants in what seems like record time and then he's kneeling on the bed beside her, kissing her gently with one hand on her jawline. Even now he doesn't pin her, doesn't hold her down or box her in, and Steph wonders if he's always so considerate or if this is him trying to avoid some kind of PTSD-freakout that he thinks might be coming.

It suggests far too much thinking, though, so Steph rolls them over and pins him, rolls her hips against his and moves to straddle him just to tease before bending down to kiss him. Danny licks into her mouth, quieter than Steph's heard him maybe ever, all breath and muffled gasps. Steph can be quiet: she had sex at Annapolis, and on a ship full of Navy men. She prefers to let loose, though, and she can right now, so she lets go, gasps and moans and arches into his touch.

"Just like that," she says, when he reaches up and pinches a nipple. "God, Danny, yes. Do that again."

"Killing me," Danny manages, and Steph bites him lightly, hands on his shoulders.

"Gonna blow your mind," she promises, and pins him while she rubs her cunt against his straining erection, lets the head of his dick brush against her clit through his boxers. The cloth is going to be absolutely soaked soon: she's usually slower to warm up than this, but something about Danny has her wet and ready before they’re even out of the gate.

Danny bites back a moan and Steph rolls her hips again, feels the length of him sliding between her labia, hot and just right.

"Maybe blow something else first, though," she suggests, and presses a biting kiss to the dip where his neck meets his shoulder, then one to his pec, one to his belly. Danny stays still the whole time, even when Steph mouths over his boxers and sucks lightly on the head of his dick.

"Yeah?" She asks, and looks up. Usually her partners are a little more into this part.

"You don't have to," Danny gasps. His pupils are blown, and Steph licks her lips experimentally, sees him shudder in response.

"No," Steph agrees. "But I really like it." She grins, and props her chin on his hip. "Can I suck your dick, Daniel Williams?"

Danny looks like he's about to have a stroke as he nods rapidly and Steph pulls his boxers down and tosses them in the direction of her laundry basket without looking. Then she turns back to the task at hand.

Danny's dick is fat enough to be a stretch, and just long enough to hit all the right places without being too much. Steph licks her lips again, and Danny outright groans. He reaches up to bite his palm.

"I want to hear you," Steph says. Then she bends down, circles his dick with one hand, and presses a kiss to the crown.

Danny clenches his hands into fists and doesn't touch her, doesn't run hands through her hair or grab. His hips twitch upwards a little bit, and Steph pushes him back to lie down, and plants a forearm across his hips to hold him still before deep-throating him in one long slide.

"Holy mother of god," Danny gasps, and Steph pulls off with a pop.

"If you can still swear like that, I'm not doing it right," she says, and goes back to sucking his dick like her life depends on it.  
Steph wasn't lying: she enjoys this, the taste, the feel of his dick on her tongue. She likes the faint tremors in his thighs and abdomen, loves that he's being so careful not to grab at her or shove her down.

"Fuck," Danny starts saying over and over again. "Fuck, fuck, fuck, Steph –"

She allows him to pull away, and he drapes an arm over his eyes, panting for breath.

"Gonna come too soon," he says. "Shit, but you're good at that."

"Breath control," Steph says. "Has its perks."

"Breath control, she says," Danny pants. "Fuck."

Steph licks up the length of his cock, teasing, and Danny nearly knees her in the face.

"Stop that," he says. "God, Steph, just -- come here."

He waves his hands down in her general direction and Steph crawls up his body, leans down to kiss him. Danny kisses back like he doesn't care about the taste of his precome in her mouth, and maybe he doesn't. Steph settles down at his side, and they make out lazily for long minutes. Eventually Steph hitches a leg up over his hip, rocks herself against his pelvis a little bit.

"I gotcha, babe," Danny whispers. His fingers are rough and calloused and hot against her, and Steph keens as they slip against her clit.

"Not yet," she says. It's pretty vague, but Danny gets it. He just slips his fingers lower, slides them against her labia, working up and down and just the slightest bit in.

"Can I eat you out?" He asks, like she'd say no, like it's some kind of prize to be awarded.

"God," Steph says. "Please." She all but shoves him down the bed, and Danny's still laughing a little bit when he comes face to face with her cunt. There's no teasing this time: he runs his flat tongue up her in one long, sizzlingly hot stroke, and Steph's back arches at the feeling of his stubble against her inner thighs.

"Again," she demands, and he puts one hand on the arch of her hip, holding her down. Steph groans at the realization the he might even be able to manage to keep her held in place if he tried hard enough. Then he licks her again, ends with a flick of his tongue against the hood of her clit, and she loses words.

Danny eases one finger in when Steph starts wriggling in place and begging, and then two, and coaxes two orgasms out of her in a row before he asks where the condoms are. He pulls away for a moment, and Steph takes the chance to catch her breath. She hates condoms, because they're so dry, even the lubricated ones.

"I'm on birth control," Steph says. "And we're both clean, I hacked your records a while back."

Danny looks at her. He's bare-ass naked, cock flushed and hard, and he still tries to make a disapproving face. Steph wraps a hand around his dick and his expression slides to something halfway between shock and one of his disappointed-parent faces.

"Don't make that face," Steph says. "You bled all over me after that one case, it was more efficient to just look up your results."

"That one case," Danny gripes, but he's smiling again. "Sure," he says. "Whatever you want, babe."

He leans down to kiss her and Steph pulls him on top of her, spreads her legs as suggestively as she knows how. Danny falls into the vee of her thighs and if Steph were crueler she might tease him for the way his hands shake very slightly as he lines up the head of his cock.

Then he's pushing in, and Steph's back is arching, and all she can feel is Danny, above her, kissing the edge of her collarbone, and his dick stretching her open, feeling so damn good.

"Fuck," Danny gasps, and bites at her pec. "Fuck, babe, you --"

"Don't stop," Steph says, and cants her hips up. She's still shivery and shaky from the first two orgasms, limbs a little noodly, but there are things worth a little effort. Danny is one of them. "Come on, Danno, fuck me like you mean it."

Danny knocks his forehead into her sternum, and then he grabs her hips and really puts his back into it, and Steph looses words in a stream of moans as she tries to get the angle just right, just so, until it's perfect and she can feel a third orgasm unspooling from somewhere deep inside her.

She yells loud when she comes, and Danny thrusts raggedly a few more times before she feels him coming inside her in unsteady pulses. He thumps down onto her like he's been shot, and Steph makes an ooof noise in mock protest. She's actually kind of pleased to have gotten such a reaction out of him.

Eventually, she'll have to clean up, but for now, with Danny all but snoring on top of her, Steph lets herself drift.

* * *

Kono takes one look at Steph the next morning when they walk into the office and gives her a high-five. Chin comes into the room, looks between Steph, Kono, and Danny, and fist-bumps Steph.

"What am I, chopped liver?" Danny protests. "Seriously, can a guy get some respect around here?"

"Wow, are you in the wrong office, man," Kono says. She turns to Steph. "We're getting lunch and you're telling me everything, boss."

And maybe Steph should be concerned about the ridiculous lack of boundaries on her team, but that sounds kind of awesome.

"Only if Chin goes with Danny," she says, poking her tongue out at him. "Wouldn't want anyone to feel left out."

"Okay, fine," Danny says. "My masculinity is un-impugned, etcetera, can we get down to doing our jobs and keeping the fine people of Hawaii safe now?"

Kono laughs at that one.

“Come on,” she says. “We’ll get, what, four days this time? I bet the governor’s hopping on paperwork on that one, though, I think there was a special courier before you got in.”

Danny sighs, and Steph resists the urge to ruffle his hair as he heads for his office. The glare he shoots her way tells her that he didn’t miss the impulse, and she kind of likes that.

Overall, in the next few weeks, things really don't change that much.

* * *

Steph kind of figured that the question of which school Grace would attend had been sorted out, until Grace comes over to her with a notebook late one Saturday afternoon while Steph is up a ladder wondering if she should just pay someone to clean the gutters after all.

"Steph?" Grace asks.

"Yeah, Grace?" Steph says, shading her eyes as she looks down.

"Can I ask you those questions today?" Grace asks.

Maybe Steph shouldn't be quite so glad to have an excuse to get off the ladder, but that downspout was just disgusting, and she's crawled belly-deep through hippo shit.

"Sure thing," Steph says, pulling off her shirt and using it as a rag to get the dirt off her face and arms. She's wearing a sports bra, it's more than Kono wears surfing. "Grab me a beer, and meet me on the lanai, okay?"

Grace nods, and Steph puts the ladder away and tosses the shirt into the laundry pile in the garage.

"Okay," Steph says, grabbing the beer and taking a long drink as she settles into her deck chair. "Etiquette, right?" She resists the urge to sprawl her legs the way so many dudes do.

Grace giggles.

"Mom said you're bluffing," she says. "I said she was wrong." She looks at Steph seriously. "You're not bluffing, are you?"

Steph grins, and then, with a wink, she tucks the cold bottle of beer down the front of her sports bra to cool off.

"Test me," she says.

Grace stares at her, and Steph shrugs.

"You got questions, Grace-Face?" She asks. "Because let me tell you, I'd rather do this than clean that downspout."

"Are you gonna make Danno do it?" Grace asks. She sounds a little like she's testing something. Steph laughs. Danny hates heights.

"He couldn't reach," she points out. "I'll hire a guy who has the right tools for the job."

Grace looks mollified.

"Okay," she says. She looks down at her notebook.

"Which goes on the outside," she asks. "The dessert fork, or the fish fork?"

"Trick question," Steph says. "Dessert forks go above the dinner plate, at a 90-degree angle to the other silverware."

Grace smiles.

"Okay," she says. "Fish fork versus salad fork?"

"Salad fork on the outside. You take forks and knives from the outside in, with the order of the courses." She pauses. "Besides, fish forks are flatter and less pointy, with a scalloped edge to help flake the fish. They look completely different."

Grace nods.

They go through a series of questions about how to introduce yourself to people of increasing status and titular rank.

"No, that one's only in England," Steph says, after a question about royal forms of address and different noble titles that Steph is dead certain Rachel put in, because it's far too technical for a kid Grace's age. "English titles derive in part from the Anglo-Saxon monarchy and in part from the French titles that came over with William the Conqueror, that's why English and French titles overlap so much but aren't quite the same."

And apparently Steph is still just as competitive as she's ever been, because she can't resist showing off a little bit. "It's different elsewhere. In Sweden, you have Princes, Dukes, Marquises, Counts, and Barons. In Russia it was completely different with the Tzar." She shrugs. "Then there's the whole question of rank in the Arab states, or in the sub-Saharan tribes and remaining monarchies, but I think that's a little too complicated for right now."

Grace takes very complex notes in what looks like absolutely tiny handwriting, and asks a few follow-up questions about royalty that Steph thinks are just curiosity, not part of her test.

Finally Grace pulls out what she clearly thinks are the big guns.

"Do you eat asparagus with a knife and fork, or with your fingers?"

"Trick question," Steph says with a grin. "According to Tiffany's, it's perfectly acceptable to eat steamed asparagus with your fingers if there's no dripping sauce, and you don't imitate a seal. She mimes being a seal eating a fish, head back and all gulping gestures, and Grace bursts out laughing when Steph's beer sloshes in the bottle.

"What's all this?" Danny asks. Steph grabs the bottle from her bra, takes a pull of her beer, and Grace writes something down.

"Etiquette lessons," Steph says. "Test, more like."

"This –" Danny gestures at Steph in paint-stained cargo pants and a sports bra, sprawled in a deck chair. "This is an etiquette lesson."

"Yep!" Grace pipes up. "Steph knows more than my books, and she promised not to sass me or get anything wrong on purpose."

"If I get it wrong, it's because I didn't learn it right," Steph promises.

"So," Danny asks. "How many did she get wrong so far?"

Grace looks at her notes, where she has answers written down in two colors.

"None of them, exactly," she says. "She's just too complicated for some of them, like, extra rules that Mom didn't teach me, or that weren't in the books. Plus she knows way more about royal titles."

"How to overthrow them?" Danny asks, with a grin. Steph raises an eyebrow at him.

"How to be polite to them when they're not agreeing with each other and you have to keep the peace," Grace corrects. "It sounds hard, but," she looks up at Steph with a little smile. "She explained it better than the book."

Danny picks Grace up and sits in the chair, settles her in his lap.

"Grownup tax," he says. "I have the bad knee, I get a chair, okay, Monkey?"

Grace squirms into a comfortable position and goes back to taking notes while Danny reads over her shoulder.

"Asparagus, really?" He asks Steph. "All I know about asparagus is that it makes your pee smell funny. Where did you learn this sh– this stuff."

"I read the whole library in high school," Steph admits. "Not much else to do in Newport, so." She shrugs, takes a pull of her beer. "Then Annapolis, and Naval Intelligence, and some specialized training with the SEALs."

"So you're a super spy," Grace says. "Like James Bond, but cooler, because you're real."

Steph smiles.

"Mostly a lot dirtier and less British," she says. "We don't get to wear tuxedos very often."

"Kono says you did for that one job," Grace says. "Where Danno dressed up as a whale, and you got to wear a pretty dress, and she had to serve drinks?"

The traveling casino infiltration, when the Jersey mob was trying to get its hand in.

"Did Kono tell you what a whale was?" Steph asks, because Danny is staring at her, blank-faced, and he clearly needs some help, here.

"Nope," Grace says. "She said Danno wore a suit and looked like a waiter. It was confusing."

"Kono's confusing a lot," Steph agrees. "It's slang for a rich white person, that's all."

"Oh," Grace says. "Like Step-Stan?"

Steph sees Danny go bright red.

"Not really," she says. "Mostly it's people who gamble, and it's not polite. You'd hurt his feelings if you called him that." And then, just in case, because it seems like Grace sometimes goes for the jugular with Stan, she adds: "You'd get me and Danny signed up for a lot of yelling if your mom found out you were learning language like that from our job. You don't have to keep it a secret, but maybe don't use it as an insult on purpose, okay?"

Grace looks at her very seriously. Danny is looking at her like she's some kind of revelation, like she's just done the most miraculous thing in the world, not just told a kid what a piece of slang means.

"Okay," Grace says. "But it kind of is like Step-Stan."

She settles back against Danny and starts drawing, seemingly oblivious to the bomb she's just dropped on her father.

* * *

Steph's monthly check-in with Dr. Kalama is a few days later, and after they've gone through the mandatory PTSD checks (Steph is sleeping well, the nightmares are better, the flashbacks are under control, all that jazz) she brings up Grace.

"Is there any movement on the school front?" She asks, manicured nails tapping lightly on the arms of her chair.

"Not sure," Steph admits. "Grace asked me a whole bunch of questions last weekend, and I think I passed, but you know, it's not my decision."

Dr. Kalama pushes, and Steph describes the situation. She seems particularly interested in Steph's dress and body language, which Steph doesn't like, and knows she'll just have to put up with. If she resists, they'll have to talk about it next month: better to rip the bandage off in one go.

"Did it make you feel better to display masculine characteristics while you answered questions in a traditionally feminine area of study?" the doctor asks, and Steph blinks.

"I wasn't displaying anything," she says. "I was cleaning the gutters, and then I answered some questions. I was just me."  
Dr. Kalama makes a note of something.

"But you surprised Grace and Danny," she says.

"Not that much," Steph argues. "I mean, come on, they know me."

"So it wasn't performative?" Dr. Kalama muses. "Did it make you feel more comfortable? Imagine Grace had asked you while you were cooking, or perhaps if she had asked you while you were wearing a dress? Would the experience have been different?"

"I hate cooking," Steph points out. "I mean, grilling is fine." She pauses. "And when do I ever wear a dress?"

Dr. Kalama sighs. "But imagine she had done so," she presses. "Would you have felt as comfortable answering such questions?"

Steph blinks.

"Are you saying Grace engaged in tactical borderline emotional warfare to get me to do what she wanted?" Steph demands.

She's kind of impressed.

"No," Dr. Kalama starts.

"No, she totally did," Steph says. "And she was right. Damn, that kid's smart." She grins. "Yeah, sure, I was more comfortable answering them on the lanai than I'd have been in the kitchen." She nods to herself. "Rachel doesn't know what's going to hit her," she says.

"You're proud of her," Dr. Kalama says.

"Well, shit, of course I am. That was damn perceptive."

"But you keep saying she's not your responsibility," Dr. Kalama says. "How does that work?"

Steph shrugs.

"It works," she says. "Danno and Rachel parent, I just play backup. I don't know what Step-Stan does, probably just pays the bills and drinks too much, because I don't know how else Grace would know what hard liquor smells like on someone's breath. Danno sticks to beer."

Dr. Kalama notes something down. Her expression is carefully blank.

"Well," she says. "I think there's a lot more there, but we're out of time."

Steph nods, and stands.

"For what it's worth," Dr. Kalama says, "I think you're making more progress than you'll allow yourself to admit."

Steph shakes her hand, and leaves.

* * *

Surprisingly, nothing goes too far sideways at work in the next two weeks. Steph looks into scheduling someone to clean the gutters, endures Danny yelling at her for spending money on something so simple, and then puts him up on a ladder. He comes back down with hands wrist-deep in leaf-goop and bird shit, and tells her she was absolutely right, make the call.

"Thank you, Danno," Steph says wryly, and gets the siding power-washed at the same time.

She starts picking up small items in the living room, one or two at a time, and putting them in a box in the attic, making space for pictures of Grace and Danny. It looks more and more like a family lives here, for all that Steph and Danny haven't talked about where their relationship is going. Steph knows she has to talk to Danny about it, eventually, but she's been putting it off.

So it's a surprise when, that Sunday, Rachel is the one who arrives alone to pick Grace up at Steph's house, Danny nowhere in sight.

"Daniel will be back soon," Rachel says. "He's fine, he's just picking up groceries."

Steph figured he'd have wanted to take Grace grocery shopping, work on teaching her how to compare prices like a normal person. Steph may not be hurting financially – hazard pay and back pay she hasn't spent for a decade make for a nice cushion – but agrees with Danny that everyone should grow up knowing how to unit-price-compare.

"Hey, Grace," Steph says, as Grace comes out of the house and sees her mom. "You good, kiddo?"

Grace nods. She looks between Steph and Rachel, and Steph pulls her into a hug.

"Your mom and I are going to talk for a bit," Steph says. "You want to practice paddling on the small board? Make sure you're in sight, okay?"

Grace nods, and drops her half-packed backpack in the basket for her stuff in the front hall as she goes out.

"Change into a swimsuit first!" Steph calls after her. "Danno will bitch about sand in your clothes!"

"I knoooooow, Steph!" Grace calls back, and runs upstairs.

Steph turns back to Rachel, who looks odd, half-pinched, half-pleased.

"What's going on?" Steph asks. "I'd offer you tea, but I drink it Navy style, and I suspect you'd hate that. Water? Wine?"

"Bit early for wine," Rachel observes, but Steph knows someone who wants an excuse when she sees one. Steph shrugs, and pulls out a nice white she bought for Cath's next visit.

"Not that early," she says. Rachel doesn't object.

They take glasses into the living room, and watch Grace set up her surfboard on the sand carefully above the wave line.

"You're good with her," Rachel observes.

"You haven't been talking to Danny," Steph says. "He thinks I'm a nightmare with children."

"Don't be absurd," Rachel says. "He thinks the sun rises and sets on your parenting, even when you scare the hell out of him by teaching Grace to jump off your shoulders in a dive."

Steph isn't sure what to make of it that Rachel knows about that.

"You're good for her, too," Rachel says. "She's nothing like I was as a child, much more a Williams hellion than an Edwards girl." She shrugs and takes a long sip of wine. "She needs someone more active in her life."

Steph takes a long pull of wine to buy time, because it sounds like Rachel is approving of her, and she has no idea what to do with that. Women like Rachel hate Steph, that's been bedrock fact for decades.

"She's a good kid," Steph says, finally. "Quick learner, good natured. She makes it easy."

"Not that easy," Rachel says. She looks Steph square in the eye. "You'd better be in this for the long haul, McGarrett. If you break my daughter's heart I'll never forgive you."

Grace laughs at something down on the beach, the sound light and carefree. Steph looks up to see she's flipped over like a turtle, and is making a sand angel.

"I'm in for as long as Danny'll have me," Steph admits. "Maybe longer, if he needs me to put up a fight to stay around."

She shrugs.

"This isn't some kind of quick impulse," she says. "I'm not going to up and leave them. Only way I'm going anywhere is if I get reactivated, and then I'll do my best to come back."

She can't promise more than that. Rachel may or may not understand. Given that she divorced Danny for his job as a cop being too high risk, Steph isn't optimistic, but it's the most Steph can do.

"Well, then," Rachel says, surprising her. "I think we should talk about how to manage etiquette lessons, then. Grace wants to stay in public school if we'll allow it. Can you recommend anyone? I'm afraid I don't have the local expertise."

Steph nods, and tries not to feel like her whole world is falling head over heels now that she's being consulted on parenting decisions.

"Yeah," she says, and refills their wine glasses. "That sounds just fine." She looks out at Grace, who is building a sand castle.

"Let's go out on the lanai," she says. "Grace will be less worried if she can tell we're not yelling at each other."

Rachel's smile is a little sad, which Steph guesses is a leftover of her divorce with Danny, but she follows Steph out readily enough.

"Mom, look," Grace says, and mock-paddles fast before she jumps to her feet in one smooth gesture. "Can I try it in the water if Danno says it's okay?"

Rachel looks over at Steph, who shrugs.

"She'll wipe out a few times," Steph says. "But she's as ready as she's gonna be."

"Talk to your father," Rachel says. "Get Steph to talk to him, too."

Grace grins, and goes back to practicing standing up on the board, careful and methodical as she rarely is.

"I'll put out feelers for etiquette," Steph says. "It'll help if you can give me a list of topics you want to cover, ranked in order of importance, and a price range for lessons." She does best with clear mission parameters, after all.

"Of course," Rachel says. "I'll email Daniel and CC you once I've talked to him."

"Sounds good," Steph says.

They're all sitting on the lanai when Danny gets home from the grocery store, Grace drinking her vitamin water out of a wine glass through a purple twisty straw and regaling them with stories about Tommy and one of his friends trying to impress someone and failing miserably. Danny pauses when he sees the three of them, obviously taken aback.

"Come on over, Daniel," Rachel calls. "We're not going to eat you alive."

Steph winks at him, and Danny flushes bright pink.

"Danno," Grace interrupts, bouncing to her feet and then putting down her drink carefully so she doesn't spill. "Danno, can Steph give me surfing lessons for real and go in the water next weekend?"

Danny looks at Rachel who nods her approval.

"We'll see," Danny says. He looks at Steph, and it's that moment that convinces Steph this might actually work, because he's not going to speak for her, volunteer her time. "You have to ask Steph," he warns. "And you have to convince me it's not a terrible idea," he adds, as Grace lets out a squeal that Steph is pretty sure was super-sonic, and could be picked up by Cath's Naval instruments halfway around the Pacific basin.

"Okay," Grace says, and her poker face is really quite good, but Steph can see the twinkle in her eye: she knows she's won. "Steph, will you teach me how to surf?"

"I'm okay with it," Steph says. "But only if your Danno and your mom say it's okay too."

Grace gives her a Look, and then goes over to Danny and starts hanging off his hands like a limpet.

"Pleeeeeease, Danno?" She asks. "Everyone else knows how to surf already, and," she stops him before he can start. "I know I shouldn't go be shark bait just because everyone else is jumping off the Empire State building or whatever, but pleeeeease? Steph's a good teacher! I'll wear a wetsuit!"

Danny glances from her to Steph, back to Grace, and then over to Rachel.

"Okay, Monkey," he says. "If you wear a wetsuit and tell Steph as soon as it's too hard."

Steph thinks Danny must be walking tired, because that's pretty much the best way to get Grace to refuse to admit defeat, but she just grins, sunny-bright and happy as a pig in shit.

"Thanks!" Grace says. "Mom, can we stay for dinner?"

The fact that Rachel agrees, Steph suspects, has more to do with the amount of wine they've both drunk than with any desire to eat with them, but it ends up being pleasant enough, so long as Steph kicks Danny under the table once in a while when his monologues start to make Rachel's expression pinch.

After dinner, Danny disappears to be sure Grace has packed all her things, and Rachel helps Steph in the kitchen.

"It really doesn't bother you," Rachel observes. Steph could play dumb, but there's really no point. She shrugs instead. There are any number of ways to explain that she knows when Danny really means it, when his bitching is just for show, but precious few that won't make Rachel feel bad in the process.

"If I minded men complaining and running their mouths –" Steph settles on, finally, and hands Rachel a plate to dry. "Well, let's just say the SEALs wouldn't have been a good fit, you get me?"

Rachel dries the plate in silence.

"I suppose," she says. "You're good for each other," she says, finally. "We never were, not really. We just papered over the cracks and pretended they'd go away if we ignored them."

Steph doesn't have a response for that: thankfully, Danny and Grace come back in, Grace waving her favorite barbie doll and talking a mile a minute about her plans for surfing lessons.

"Okay, okay, Monkey," Danny says, and picks her up with a soft 'oof!' noise. "But you've got to get some sleep, okay, you've got school before you have surfing. And if you don't do your homework, no lessons for you! I'll make Steph help you with your math homework again."

Grace squeals, and Rachel shoots a confused glance at Steph.

"She didn't like when I tried to teach her linear algebra shortcuts," Steph explains.

"Ah," Rachel replies, tone dry. "I can't imagine why not."

Then Danny plunks Grace down, and she and Rachel leave in a flurry of hugs and handshakes, a tiny human hurricane and her much calmer minder. Danny watches them leave with something that almost approaches a smile.

"No warning," he says, and it might be a complaint from someone else, but Steph doesn't hear any bite to his tone. "I just show up, and my ex is sitting on the lanai having a glass of wine with you. Heart attack, babe. You're seriously trying to give me a heart attack."

He mimes a heart attack and Steph gives him an unimpressed look. He grabs a beer, and Steph gestures for another: the wine was fine, but she's always been more of a beer or whiskey person anyway. She grabs the beer he holds out to her, then, and grins wide and bright at Danny.

"Oh, that wasn't me trying to give you a heart attack," she says, and drags him back out to the lanai to watch the last of the sunset reflect against the waves. "Believe me, you'll know when I'm trying."

Danny laughs, and settles on the hammock next to her. If they end up watching rather less of the sunset than planned, well, there's one tomorrow, after all.

**Author's Note:**

> This is basically my answer to the idle question: "Self, I wonder what would be different if Steve and Mary were Steph and Mark?" 
> 
> It might also be a case study in gender identity and expression and how you can be cis-het and still have "a case of the genders" in ways that we're not very good at dealing with yet on the whole. 
> 
> There will be another one eventually about Steph and Mark and how they interact the same and differently. I meant to include Mark here, but Grace kind of stole the show.


End file.
